Giraffe Restaurant @ Heathrow T5

Giraffe, Heathrow T5

It’s a bit of a different one, but since I went there whilst on my travels, I feel like Giraffe deserves a little mention.

I have to admit, going to Giraffe for breakfast turned out to be a bit of an oversight. Not due to the restaurant itself, more because I managed to forget that because I was flying with BA and not Ryanair (other budget carriers are available!), I would be provided with a breakfast on the flight.

First Impressions

I like Giraffe, I’ve been a few times, mainly to the one in Waterloo (which is always rammed and has a half an hour queue… plan ahead) or the one in Guildford, which is not normally rammed, but is equally good.

This particular restaurant is more like a department store concession, mainly because it isn’t in a retail unit or anything like that, it is open plan with the rest of the departures concourse. This is pretty nice, it means you can see what’s going on, both inside the terminal and on the runway, whilst the screens help you to spot when your plane is on ‘last call’ and you still have a sausage left on your plate. It does mean the experience is also a little odd though, as you don’t have the normal restaurant atmosphere.

4/5

Service

It was pretty packed in there and to be honest, the service wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful either. We made a couple of changes to the standard dishes when ordering and they got those totally wrong, so that wasn’t so great, but what can you expect from somewhere like that. The waiter was exceptionally cheery though, especially given how early we were there.

3.5/5

Food

Giraffe’s food is generally interesting because it comes from all over the world, or at least it is inspired by stuff from around the world, a little bit. My breakfast wasn’t, it came from a frying pan, just the way god intended. I can’t really say much about it because it was a typical fried breakfast, a pretty good one at that. If you like that kind of thing and you are indeed flying on a budget airline, you could go a great deal worse than eating here. In terms of the lunch/dinner menu, I don’t suppose it’s much different from the other Giraffes, meaning that it remains a great place to go and grab a bite before your flight. (I’m rhyming now, genius writing crossed with simplistic poetry is just one of my many untapped talents.)

4/5

Price

A restaurant in a location with a captive audience… There isn’t a single moment in all of history where this didn’t mean vastly inflated prices. My Breakfast was over £8, which is far too much, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be the same situation anywhere, so what can you do…

3/5

Overall

Nice restaurant, good food, slightly odd location, decent service, 3x large Giraffes. What more could a soon to be jet-lagged man ask for?

4.5/5

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Sofitel Heathrow Terminal 5

Sofitel Heathrow

I had never heard of Sofitel before this holiday, they have both city centre hotels (including London) and airport locations.

Star Rating

*****

It is important to note that hotel ratings have not yet been standardised internationally, meaning that the rating listed above is the official rating provided by the relevant agency in the hotel’s locale.

Location

The Walkway

Sofitel’s Terminal 5 hotel is a bit special, primarily because the entrance is actually inside the terminal. It is a surprisingly long walk down a corridor to get to the hotel itself, but when you are checking in at about 5 in the morning, staggering out of your room and 5 minutes later finding yourself in the airport is a pleasant experience. There is also a bus which you can use to reach the other terminals.

5/5

First Impressions

The hotel itself is lovely. I am sure the temptation is there to take advantage of the location to bump up the prices without really providing an experience to match. I didn’t have to check in myself, arriving late, but the check-in desk were extremely helpful in providing me with a door card and all that stuff. You can immediately tell it’s a nice hotel, with plenty of open space, a few bars and restaurants and a few little shops and things; there’s even an Audi R8 on show.

Now, if you aren’t staying there, access to any floor but the lobby is restricted. That is to say, you can go anywhere you want to spend money, but getting to a room is only possible if you have a room key, which you will need in order to operate the lifts.

4.5/5

Amenities

The bars are pretty straightforward and I didn’t get the chance to eat there. Apart from that there is plenty of room. The hotel is split up into a number of different sections within the main shell of the building, each with rooms running up and down a corridor and windows facing out into one of the open spaces, whether that is the bar or the ‘Zen Garden’, which our room faced.

‘Zen Garden’

To be quite honest, I don’t really understand the Zen Garden. To me it looks like one of those things that architects put there to make their plans look pretty. You know the ones, you see this attractive sketch, usually with pastel colours, or something that looks like it’s been painted in watercolour. The plans talk about amazing open spaces for people to hang out, the Zen Garden offering the chance to stop for a contemplative thought or the chance to ‘escape from the hustle and bustle’. The reality never matches up, with the open spaces left unused because they are totally impractical, and the reality of the buildings never matching up to their imaginary forefathers. What I am trying to say, with this unnecessarily long ramble is that the Zen Garden is pointless. There was never anyone in it, there were a couple of benches and a few ornaments, but certainly no ‘garden’ and all it really offered is the chance to charge a bit more for a room that overlooks it.

There is a spa and relaxation suite, perfect for pampering groups of hens on their way out of the country for a wild holiday, or the over 50s with too much money to spend. There are apparently 5x treatment rooms, sauna, steam and a ‘Vitality Pool’ which is ponce-speak for a pool which is too small to actually swim in.

There is also a hair salon and jewellery shop although if you have a 6am flight I doubt you’ll find much time to make the most of these! Perhaps more practical is the car park, which means that you can purchase both a room and parking for your trip, perfect for the more busy travellers out there.

In reality though, the hotel has pretty much anything a traveller could need, with hard liquor or relaxation available… although it all comes at a price.

4.5/5

The Room

Until recently, my hotel related experience was pretty non-existent. Between the ages of 0 and 12 my holidays consisted almost exclusively of Mathews caravan holidays on the French Atlantic Coast. From there on family holidays were usually spent in Spanish apartments, with the odd trip to Center Parcs thrown in.

What all this means is that I was far from qualified to hold any type of opinion on where I stayed, because I had almost no point of reference. Since then I have been lucky enough to stay in a few hotels and I have tended to find that regardless of whether you spend £90 for a night or £290 for a night, much of what you find in your room is the same.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is, the ratings in this area are pretty tight, unless a room is dire, but things like cleanliness and spaciousness will have a big impact an my views, because things like beds and toilets are items you’d hope to find in all rooms. I suppose decor and the like will also count for a lot.

Sofitel ‘Classic Room’

I believe I stayed in a ‘classic room’, which is, as you might expect, one of the rooms at the cheap end of the spectrum. There are suites available, with the largest offering 3 bedrooms. If that’s what you’re aiming for, I imagine your experience will be 100x nicer than mine and I can tell you now, my impressions were pretty darn good.

Like many business and higher end hotels, Sofitel Heathrow’s rooms are relatively generous in terms of the space afforded and the decor is clean and inoffensive. You won’t be surprised to learn that everything also feels modern, with the hotel only having been open for a few years.

There is a flat screen TV, mini-bar, safe and internet access in the room via an ethernet cable. In the bathroom, there is a bath and a walk in shower, rather than the more predictable ‘shower over the bath’ arrangement that is popular in hotels and homes across the country. It is worth noting that in these cheaper rooms, the broadband access, be it WiFi or through the cable is chargeable, whilst in all other types of room it is free.

The bed, which was queen sized, was nice. Slightly on the firmer side, which is how I like it. I didn’t like the pillows, which were some kind of unnecessarily soft feather based affair. Apparently they have 5 varieties available and a call down to reception would have sorted me out, but I’m not the sort to make a fuss (it’s the British way), so I soldiered on, with my face increasingly engulfed by pillow as the night wore on.

I can’t really have any complaints about the room though and given that it was really just a stop-over for a night before flying out, it was more than comfortable.

4.5/5

Food

Unfortunately, with an early flight and the choice of a room that doesn’t have breakfast included, unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to sample the hotel’s cuisine. I understand the restaurant, well, Brasserie; Brasserie Roux serves fantastic food if you are at the hotel for dinner, whilst there is Breakfast included with all of the nicer rooms at either the Vivre Restaurant or La Belle Époque. If you have had the chance to eat at any of Sofitel’s restaurants, please do leave a comment with your thoughts below.

I did have breakfast in the terminal though, at Giraffe, a review of which is on this blog. (It’s not yet, hence the lack of a link, but it will be, then there will be a link and not this bit in brackets, which is temporary…)

Costs

Rooms cost upwards of £130 if you book at least 2 weeks in advace or closer to £170 for something more flexible, meaning that although it’s not cheap, what you save on catching the National Express Coach (see my earlier review) you can spend staying here, instead of with Lenny Henry at the big purple Premier Inn. Once again though, in a section I have poorly labelled ‘cost’ it is the value for money that counts and although it’s not cheap and you don’t get a great deal included, it certainly isn’t bad value for money.

3.5/5

Overall

A lovely hotel, with an unrivalled location, particularly if you happen to by flying with BA from Heathrow. It’s modern classy and has a fresh design which sets you up nicely before a long journey, or allows you to have an ideal night of rest on your way back home.

If you plan on staying at Sofitel, you can book with them here. In case you’re wondering, I don’t make a penny when you click-through to any of the sites I link to from my blog, I am just trying to make your life easier!

I’d love to have the chance to stay again and if I have the money, I will certainly opt to stay here over any of the budget alternatives.

4.5/5

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